The triboelectric effect is familiar to anyone who has rubbed wool on a PVC pipe, or a balloon on a childs’ hair and then stuck it on the wall. Rubbing transfers some electrons from one material to the other, and they become oppositely charged. We usually think of this as “static” electricity because we don’t connect the two sides up with electrodes and wires. But what if you did? You’d have a triboelectric generator.

In this video, [Cayrex] demonstrates just how easy making a triboelectric generator can be. He takes pieces of aluminum tape, sticks them to paper, and covers them in either Kapton or what looks like normal polypropylene packing tape. And that’s it. You just have to push the two sheets together and apart, transferring a few electrons with each cycle, and you’ve got a tiny generator.

As [Cayrex] demonstrates, you can get spikes in the 4 V – 6 V range with two credit-card sized electrodes and fairly vigorous poking. But bear in mind that current is in the microamps. Given that, we were suprised to see that he was actually able to blink an LED, even if super faintly. We’re not sure if this is a testament to the generator or the incredible efficiency of the LED, but we’re nonetheless impressed.

Since around 2012, research into triboelectric nanogenerators has heated up, as our devices use less and less power and the structures to harvest these tiny amounts of power get more and more sophisticated. One of the coolest such electron harvesters is 3D printable, but in terms of simplicity, it’s absolutely hard to beat some pieces of metal and plastic tape shoved into your shoe.